DA: Throw out mass murderer Michael Ballard's stay of execution

With the recent Supreme Court decision upholding the death penalty, Northampton County District Attorney John Morganelli has asked a judge to vacate a stay of execution for convicted mass murderer Michael Eric Ballard.

Morganelli said the June 29 federal ruling "should put to rest forever frivolous claims by death row inmates challenging execution methods." Meanwhile, the district attorney said, Ballard has already waived his post-conviction appeal rights and now the time has expired to pursue those appeals.

"The Supreme Court specifically stated that while methods of execution have changed over the years, the court has never invalidated a state's chosen procedure for carrying out a sentence of death as violative of the Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment," Morganelli said in a statement Monday.

David Rudovsky, a lawyer spearheading a separate Pennsylvania case challenging the death penalty, said Tuesday the Supreme Court ruling should not affect his case.

Rudovsky said last month he believes the case, which Ballard has joined, provides grounds to delay Ballard's execution.

The Commonwealth Court case claims Pennsylvania's protocol for lethally injecting prisoners violates state law by changing the cocktail of drugs that are used. The protocol was rewritten in recent years due to the state's difficulties in securing the drugs from manufacturers, who have faced public pressure from death-penalty opponents.

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Northampton County Judge Emil Giordano is scheduled to hold a hearing July 21 on vacating Ballard's stay of execution. Morganelli laid out his legal argument in court documents filed Wednesday.

Ballard was sentenced to death in 2011 for savagely knifing to death his former girlfriend, Denise Merhi, 39; her father, Dennis Marsh, 62; her grandfather, Alvin Marsh Jr., 87; and Steven Zernhelt, 53, a neighbor in Northampton who heard screams and tried to help.

At the time of the June 26, 2010, massacre, Ballard had recently been paroled from prison, where he served 17 years for murdering an Allentown man nearly two decades earlier. The state Supreme Court upheld Ballard's death sentence in 2013, citing overwhelming evidence in support of it.

Just three men have been executed in Pennsylvania in the modern era of capital punishment, and all were volunteers who, in effect, asked the state to carry out their sentences. The last time an inmate was put to death against his will was in 1962.